“I am a great believer in the old adage ‘why pay someone to do a job when you can do it yourself’ and, if I can save the club money, it means there’s more funds available for new machinery!”
unknown, but thought to date back hundreds of years.
The modern course at Mold is an 18 hole, 5603 yard, par 67 uplands course with stunning views of the Clwydian Hills, Cheshire and the Peak District. The additional nine holes were added the other side of the old wall. Head Greenkeeper is Colin Jones. He began his greenkeeping career at Padeswood and Buckley Golf Club at the age of sixteen, whilst on a YTS scheme and studying at the Welsh College of Horticulture.
By the age of nineteen he was Deputy Head Greenkeeper at Padeswood and Buckley before moving six miles ‘up the hill’ to Mold to take on the Head Greenkeeper role at the age of twenty- five. He has been with the club for eleven years and says “I really enjoy working here”. Not difficult to understand when you see its stunning location. Colin has three staff to assist him, Paul Evans, Peter Richards and ‘new boy’ Karl Parry.
One of Colin’s bugbears in his time at Mold has been the old dry stone wall which was falling into a state of disrepair and, in places, considered dangerous. Golfers were probably partly to blame for its demise as they were hopping over it to look for their wayward golf balls. So, last year, he decided to do something about it. Colin takes up the story: “I tried to get a grant to help fund its
repair from CADW, the historic environment service of the Welsh Assembly Government. ‘Cadw’ (pronounced cad-oo) is a Welsh word meaning ‘to keep’. Unfortunately, there was no grant aid available and the cost of repairing this massive stretch of wall would have been
around £13-14,000. The budget for that was simply not available as I was in the process of rebuilding my old clay based greens to USGA specification, doing all the work in-house and tackling one green a year. Gordon Hughes, a member of our
Greens Committee and a keen walker of the course and surrounding countryside, had expressed his concerns about the wall, and how this wonderful piece of our heritage was not going to be around for much longer if nothing was done. He suggested to me that the
greenkeeping staff could go on a dry stone walling course to learn this age old skill and rebuild the wall in-house. I took this on board and thought, why not, we do everything else in-house? I’m a great believer in the old adage ‘why pay someone to do a job when you can do it yourself ’ and, if I save the club money, it means there’s more funds available for new machinery! I spoke to my staff (which, at the time, included John Williams but not Karl, his replacement) and, to my delight, they were all keen and willing to go on the course with me. We joined the course at Llys Fasi College, where our tutor was Craig Evans, the dry stone waller on Moel Arthur, part of the Clwydian Hills. In January 2008 we started rebuilding the 285 metre stretch of wall that separates two fairways. The work was scheduled around the more important greenkeeping tasks and, obviously, the upkeep of the course came first. We worked in the rain, sleet and some pretty windy conditions - Mold is an exposed site some 850 feet above sea level. As a lot of the stone had gone missing over the years, I decided to make more
gaps in the wall. I thought this made good sense as it would save a bit of time. But, I quickly realised it was more difficult and time consuming to make two ‘cheek ends’ to form the gap. When the grass started growing, the work on the wall had to stop. In the autumn we also added drainage to an old clay based green, as a cheaper alternative to a complete rebuild, as I didn’t want too much disruption to the course in its build up to the Centenary. The work has already proved an instant success.
In January 2009 the work
recommenced on the dry stone walling. Members were constantly making positive comments on the job, so I put up a notice to see if anyone was interested in learning this old skill and helping us.
Our newest member of staff, Karl
Parry, joined the team along with some keen and willing volunteer members, Gareth Bellis, Bill Spence and Les Robins. The wall was finished in March and it certainly makes a superb feature for the club in its Centenary year. The feedback from the members has been incredible; everyone has congratulated us on the job and even had a raffle to give us a bonus as a token of their appreciation.”
A ‘green’ approach
“As mentioned previously, the greens are gradually being upgraded to USGA specification. So far nine have been completed, six of them in-house. The remainder are mainly ‘a horrible clay base’!
They are a mixture of bents and poa.
We cut at 5mm in the summer and 8mm in the winter. Each green is hollow cored
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